The Lovely Shadow (4 page)

I rolled onto my hands and knees and began to
swivel my head around. Taking stock of my situation without the
blinding effects of panic worked out much better for me. For
starters I could see that it was not actually pitch dark as I had
originally thought. Directly behind me there was a very faint wash
of light on one end of the small basement that originated from a
bright horizontal line of light about seven feet above my head and
off to the left.

The line of light was only about a half inch
thick and about three feet long. I puzzled on that line of light
for a couple seconds before I realized that it was light shining
under the door that led out of the basement.

I closed my eyes and visualized the basement
the way I’d seen it with the light on and figured that I was right
in the middle of the small room. To my left would be the washer and
drier. To the right would be a rack with several shelves filled
with dry and canned goods. On one end of that rack would be the big
upright freezer where I loaded all the overflow of perishables that
wouldn’t fit in the fridge and freezer in the kitchen. The other
end of the rack pointed towards the stairs.

Since I had turned around and was now facing
towards the door and stairs, I knew that I was facing north and
directly behind me was all the storage. Boxes filled with
miscellaneous knick knacks, old clothes, Christmas decorations, and
other such odds and ends were stacked against the retaining wall on
the south-east side of the basement.

A couple old lawn-chairs, a table with a
broken leg, an old wicker picnic basket, a musty old twin mattress,
and a bunch of other stuff that my mind couldn’t quite bring into
focus was piled up against the south-west and west walls.

All around the washing machine to my left
would be baskets of clean and dirty laundry, (mostly dirty). My
mother had long since given up on washing clothes and I was
honestly not that particular about doing it myself, although I had
learned how to do it and did occasionally wash a few clothes and
towels when I started feeling particularly grubby.

There was a shelf above the washer that
contained all the normal things you should find in a laundry area,
soap, bleach, and drier sheets. Right in front of the Washer there
would be the small stool that I had dragged over months prior so
that I could reach the items on the shelf.

On the south side of the washer was a big
cabinet filled with linens. That cabinet had not been opened for
months as my mother had stopped changing the sheets on our beds
when she went bonkers, and I really didn’t care if my sheets were
dirty or not.

Directly beside the washer, on the north side
of it, was the drier, and directly north of the drier was a large
trash can where the lint from the lint screen was deposited.

With my visualization on the basement
complete I felt confident enough to stand up and head towards the
stairs. I opened my eyes and focused them on the narrow strip of
light that shone several feet in front of, and above me. I took two
confident strides towards the stairs and then tripped ungracefully
over the small stepstool that I thought should have been further
off to my left.

I threw my arms out in front of me as I flew
forward and caught the fingers of my right hand on the bottom edge
of the right hand banister of the stairs, bending them backwards
further than they were ever meant to go.

The pain was sharp and sudden and I was
fairly certain that I broke the middle and ring fingers. I cried
out as I continued to fall, (my fingers apparently not quite strong
enough to stop my forward momentum).

I must have done a bit of a pirouette as I
fell because I hit the stairs hard on my right side. My right
shoulder hit the edge of the third stair up from the bottom, my
forearm hit the edge of the second stair, and my hip crunched
against the edge of the bottom stair.

My head swung down on a neck that suddenly
seemed to be made of rubber and smacked my right ear against the
edge of the fourth stair. When I came to rest I was all twisted up
with my left arm pointing straight out and up like a rodeo rider
trying desperately to get his eight seconds of glory, and my right
arm curled beneath my body having taken a major portion of the
impact.

The cry I had been uttering as I fell evolved
into a scream of acute pain when I landed. White light speckled
with big red blotches flashed in my eyes. My arm, fingers and hip
were all forgotten. All that existed was my already damaged right
ear, burning and throbbing from its impact with the edge of the
stair, it pulsed with infinite pain and I had a sneaking suspicion
that I might actually have sliced it in half.

As I continued to scream, (a long single note
fairly reminiscent of my Mother’s banshee like screech) the thought
passed quickly through my head that I had finally done what my
Mother couldn’t, I’d completely destroyed my ear.

‘Well, this oughtta make the old Bitty
happy.’ I thought. ‘What she couldn’t knock off my head, I’ve
managed to sever on the friggin’ stair.’

My lungs ran out of air fairly quickly and my
scream faded into the padded silence that the basement created.

I lay there for a bit trying to catch my
breath, trying to think coherent thoughts, but unable to because
the all consuming pain that enveloped my body (especially my ear)
felt like the walls of an over tight womb, and it was crushing my
thoughts as well as my breath out of my body.

I was completely wracked with pain. My throat
was filled with fragments of the imaginary crystal that my Mother’s
screech had shattered. The fingers of my right hand were bent
unnaturally and were smashed against my chest, throbbing with every
heart beat.

My right shoulder and forearm felt like they
were smashed against a knife edge that radiated pain in ripples
like the circular ripples on the water when a pebble is dropped
into it. Each individual ripple hit my body like a baseball bat,
thumping against my arm and shoulder and making my whole body
shudder. My hip was likewise in a sea of pain. It felt like someone
had performed surgery on it but left the scalpel wedged in the
socket between the bones to grind and press against them.

Above all this, however, was my ear. I was
certain that it had been sliced in two. The pain was indescribable.
It burned, it pulsed, it throbbed, it ached. There aren’t enough
words in the English language to adequately describe it.

With every pulse of pain, stars danced before
my eyes. Flashes of red, tinged with white auras floated randomly
before me in the dark. I lay there for a second considering how
nice it would be to go visit Joe right about now and then I passed
out.

I don’t think I was out very long. When I
woke up I was still lying in the same position. I lifted my head
off the stair slowly, wincing not only at the pain in my ear, but
now also in my neck. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to find
that my head was not stuck to the stair in some puddle of gory
fluid that had leaked out while I slept.

I rolled stiffly over onto my back side and
sat up on the stair that had been crushing my hip. I reached across
my body with my left arm to examine my right ear, (my right arm was
hurting and I just wasn’t ready to explore that injury yet).

I put my fingertips gently against my head
just above the ear and dragged them down very slowly until I felt
the top of my ear. It hurt like the dickens to touch it but I went
ahead and traced the outline of my ear anyway, swallowing the pain
as I went. When I had traced the whole outline of my ear and
decided that it was all there, not turned to hamburger, and not
even bleeding, I nearly wept with joy. I had been so certain that I
had lost the ear that I could barely believe that it was all
intact.

After inspecting the ear, it was time to
check my right arm which I had thus far kept tucked against my
chest. I pulled it away from my chest fully expecting to find it
broken in several places. I visualized white fragments of bone
poking through the bleeding flesh while the arm hung limp, bending
at unnatural angles.

Using the fingers of my left hand I felt
along my arm. It had a tender spot and a slight dent where the
forearm had hit the stair, but I could feel neither torn skin nor
blood leaking from it. It felt as if all the angles were in the
proper places. It was hurting, that was for damned sure, but I
didn’t think it was broken.

I raised my arm above my head slowly,
grimacing at the pain this caused in my shoulder. The shoulder
creaked and groaned in protest, but with a slight pop and a little
grinding, it finally loosened up and allowed the arm to move around
in the socket joint with a little less resistance and a whole lot
less pain.

I brought my arm back down and rested it in
my lap. I had to check my fingers. I was afraid to do it because I
knew for sure that if anything was broken, it was them. I started
with the pinky. I figured it was the one digit aside from the thumb
that had no pain and was therefore least likely to broken. Holding
my breath, I pinched the tip of the pinky gingerly between my left
thumb and pointer finger and wiggled it slowly back and forth.

The movement caused a slight pain in the
knuckle at the base of my ring finger, but no pain at all in the
pinky. I let my breath out in a whoosh of relief. I didn’t want to
continue checking the other digits but I knew I had to. I decided
to move onto the thumb. Rather than pinch my thumb with my left
hand fingers, I decided I’d just wiggle it around under its own
power. I wiggled it. It wiggled freely. I really wanted to feel
relieved by that, but I had already known that would be the case
and that sort of made it a nonevent.

I sat on the stair for several minutes before
I summoned the courage to continue checking my fingers. I reached
out for them several times, only to pull my hand away again at the
last second. Finally, taking a deep breath and gritting my teeth, I
reached over and touched my remaining fingers.

I brushed the pointer, ring and middle
fingers of my left hand gently against their respective twins on
the backside of my right hand, starting at the lowest knuckles and
dragging them outward towards the finger tips. A small groan
escaped my lips as I confirmed my fears.

My pointer finger felt a little swollen and
tender to the touch but was at least pointing straight. My middle
and ring fingers were a different story. Both of them were swollen
to the size of little sausages and extremely sensitive to the
touch.

The knuckles near the palms, at the base of
the two sausage fingers had irregular lumps protruding from them
and felt to be roughly the size of walnuts. Both fingers were
pointing off towards the pinky; the wrong direction.

I had already suspected that my fingers were
in bad shape, but having discovered the physical evidence of their
injury that proved my assumptions correct did little to fatten my
ego. In fact, the knowledge made me feel a bit sick to my stomach.
Actually a lot sick to my stomach. I leaned forward and puked all
over myself.

When I was done puking I began to feel dizzy
and started to shiver uncontrollably. I could feel beads of sweat
breaking out on my forehead. I had seen enough nonfiction
television programs to know that I was going into shock, but
knowing I was going into shock didn’t do anything to make it stop
happening.

For one crazy second I considered calling out
for my mother, half believing that she would come and rescue me;
that she’d come running when I called and throw open the basement
door like some kind of superhero, casting me in a warm glow of
light. Then she’d run in and scoop me off the floor and hold me
tight, telling me all the while that everything was going to be
okay. That thought passed quickly and I realized something else in
that moment.

Once I understood that my mother was
completely insane I regarded her as poison! I didn’t want her help.
I wondered briefly if I still loved her but quickly decided that
this was not a good time to ponder deep moral issues.

‘For God’s sake,’ I thought, ‘I’m going into
friggin shock here!’

I took a few deep breaths to try and calm
myself and tried to remember what the people on those shows had
done to stop people from going completely into shock. The first
thing I remembered was that I needed to get a blanket wrapped
around me, so I figured it would be a good time to try ascending
the stairs again so I could get to my bedroom for a blanket.

I stood very carefully and reached out
blindly with my left hand to find the banister. I pawed the air
like a cat pawing at a piece of yarn dangling just above its head
until my hand finally connected with the rail. Once I had it in my
grasp I put a death grip on it and began to pull myself upwards,
feeling carefully with each step to make sure I didn’t miss a step.
After the day I had been having, the last thing I wanted was to
take a tumble down the stairs.

I ascended the stairs like a geriatric old
man, reaching slowly out with my left foot for purchase on the next
step then pulling myself up with the aid of the banister. Using
that forward momentum I’d lift my right foot up behind it so that
both feet were on the same step. There were only twelve stairs
between the basement floor and the door above that led to the
kitchen but it felt like it took half a lifetime to reach the
top.

Once I reached the top I stood for a second
with my left foot resting on the topmost stair and my right foot
resting on the stair just below it, catching my breath. I was still
shivering and feeling a bit nauseous and the exertion and fear that
came from climbing the stairs had completely exhausted me.

Fear seemed to be such a constant companion
to me since Joe died that I regarded the feeling with a certain
level of reverential awe. As I sat there panting at the top of the
stairs I wondered if it was only exhaustion that kept me from
reaching out and opening the door. I decided it was more than
exhaustion after all.